Veneration of Dreams // Ransom Drysdale

eighteen // siesta

Katarina watched the woman with narrow eyes as she finished applying a thick white plaster over her bicep and left without a word. Across the bedroom, Ransom stood before a wide flat screen TV, staring fully at the news. He managed the reporter's voice for a few moments before switching the channel then turning the box off altogether.

"I guess that story finally broke," Katarina said.

"It was only a matter of time."

He looked up in distaste as Richard moved from his perch on the dresser, checking his watch.

"What's taking him so long?" Katarina asked as he walked toward the door.

"He says he's on business but I reckon he's just working up the nerve to talk to you."

"Because you know him so well."

"Better than you. We were partners." Richard replied. That would shut her up.

It did, at least until the door closed behind him.

"Are you sure you still want to do this?" Ransom asked, grimmer than she was.

"What happens to Matthew's girls if I don't? I just hope it won't take as much as I promised, there's only so much I can hurt him, even knowing..." She tapered off, digging her nails into her the armrests.

Richard's voice still rang in her ear, the words he said to her, one last truth he gave her fresh on her mind as she approached the main deck of her father's yacht. In the back of her jeans was a pistol and beneath her bandage, a small razor-blade. Not that it mattered when one of the guards patted her down before she could so much as see her father. The man carried the weapons behind her as she was urged up three small stairs to a lifted balcony. A silhouette stood there, a shadow on the night, staring into the water, it's depths just as obscure and black.

"Put them on the table."

She hadn't heard his voice in so long.

"You can leave."

"Sir-"

No response, only a flicker of annoyance in the air, barely a sigh, and yet.

"Of course, sir." The man continued, hastily correcting himself, and disappeared from view.

"You look beautiful, Katarina." Said the silhouette.

"You haven't even turned around yet."

"I don't need to look to know."

Katarina stepped toward the table, eyes on her gun, but he seemed to know her every move before it happened.

"Don't."

She found herself obliging, grasping the stem of a glass of champagne instead.

"Are you ever going to turn around? I'm starting to think you're not really...there." She finished, her voice catching when he finally faced her. He looked older than she imagined, his white suit not quite hanging right and his face marred by a scar from his cheekbone to his jaw. If she was being honest, he looked like a ghost.

"What happened to your face?" She asked, tone not nearly as apathetic or mocking as she would have liked.

"What happened to your arm?"

Gabriel Lago took two steps forward and she took one back, into the railing. She looked over her shoulder and shuddered. Water rushed beneath her, lapping at the sides of the boat as if it were starved.

"I heard you blew up half a prison to find me."

"I thought you might be proud," She said, gritting her teeth.